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Part-time lecturers at Rutgers University who went on strike with other faculty unions this week made “historic compensation gains” in a tentative deal announced early Saturday, labor leaders said, as they agreed to suspend a walkout that had halted classes on three campuses.
Less clear is how satisfied graduate workers and Rutgers Biomedical Health Sciences workers are with their agreement, with ratification of the deals still necessary from the 9,000 workers represented by the three unions.
Several issues remain to be ironed out in the coming days, union leaders warned, though classes were expected to be back in session on Monday.
Still, Bryan Sacks, the leader of the union representing adjunct faculty, hailed what he called “historic compensation gains that are going to total nearly 44% in the life of the contract.” The increases amount to almost 30% in the first year for Rutgers’ “very low-paid, part-time lecturers,” Sacks added in an interview Saturday.
“This will be enormously important to us.”
The framework deal announced by Gov. Phil Murphy’s office early Saturday morning will allow classes on Rutgers’ New Brunswick, Camden and Newark campuses to resume, five days after unions began the first faculty walkout in the university’s 257-year history.
“This fair and amicable conclusion respects the interests of many different stakeholders, upholds New Jersey’s values, and puts an end to a standoff that was disruptive to our educators and students alike,” Murphy said in a press release issued after 1 a.m.
The unions in a statement on a joint website said they were “suspending” the strike, leaving open the possibility that it could be resumed if the final agreements are not ratified by their full membership. There was no indication of when those votes may come.
“Because of the pressure of time there are many outstanding issues that still need to be resolved and if they’re not we could find ourselves back on strike in short order,” said Howie Swerdloff, a secretary of the adjuncts’ union. The “biggest shortfall ” was the lack of progress in the biomedical faculty contract, he added.
“There are also pay equity issues, diversity demands and other social justice demands that still need to be addressed.”
A focus on adjunct pay, job security
Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway said the framework agreement “provides fair and equitable wages, benefits, and work conditions for our faculty as well as our graduate students and part-time lecturers.” Like the labor leaders, he praised Murphy for his role in moving the talks forward.
“Most important, closure on this framework will allow the 67,000 students at Rutgers to resume their studies and pursue their academic degrees,” Holloway continued. “Nothing we do is as important as living up to the expectations that our students have of us to be fully supportive of them and nurturing of their academic ambitions and dreams.”
Becky Givan, president of the union representing full-time Rutgers’ faculty, the AAUP-AFT, said the labor coalition had achieved “unprecedented gains for contingent workers, graduate students and our communities.”
Adjuncts will also see “significantly improved job security provisions,” added Sacks, of the adjuncts’ union. Under the proposal, many part-time lecturers would be eligible for two and four-semester appointments beginning in the fall of 2024. Previously, adjuncts had to reapply for their contracts every semester, regardless of how long they had taught at the university.
“This has been something that we’ve long sought,” Sacks added. “We had almost no job security provisions with any teeth in previous contracts.”
For subscribers:This is why the stakes are so high for everyone involved in the Rutgers strike | Stile
How it got to this point
Union officials have said they felt the university leadership was not taking them “seriously” for the past 10 months of negotiations. Their core demands include equal pay for the lowest-paid part-time lecturers with wages calculated based on the salaries of full-time, non-tenured professors, and raises for graduate assistants from their $30,000 annual salary to a “living wage” that can meet New Jersey’s high cost of living and current inflation.
The university’s counterproposals, which have included raises for graduate student workers, were still not substantive enough and belied the unions’ “basic premise” of equity, Sacks told NorthJersey.com.
Related:Rutgers union gets core demand met as ‘unusual’ faculty strike draws attention nationally
Holloway said in an email to faculty and students that the university has programs that would increase salaries across the board for full-time faculty by 12% by July 1, 2025, and 3% in lump-sum payments to all the faculty unions to be paid out over the first two years of the new contract.
It has offered increases of approximately 20% over four years in the per-credit salary rate for part-time lecturers and for winter/summer instructors, and has offered to raise the minimum salary for postdoctoral fellows and associates in the faculty union by more than 20% over the contract period. It has offered wage raises and longer funding support for graduate researchers.
Battling a growing trend that dates to the 1980s
The unions are most outraged that graduate workers and part-time lecturers must reapply for contracts every semester regardless of how many years they have worked at the university. This is a nationwide trend that took off with the “privatization” of higher education in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan, said Risa Lieberwitz, professor of labor and employment law at Cornell University and general counsel for the national American Association of University Professors.
Privatization across sectors in the 1980s shifted responsibilities from the government to a market-based vision, affecting industries like public higher education that were built on universal needs. State governments were also affected by funding cuts. This forced tuitions to rise, which caused students to take out expensive loans. Colleges were compelled to find ways to cut corners and hiring cheaper labor in the form of part-time adjunct faculty was one way out.
Today 30% to 35% of faculty jobs nationally are tenure-track, while the majority, 70-75% are not tenured, Lieberwitz said.
A growing number of campus strikes nationwide are driven by faculty, part-timers and graduate employees recognizing that they share common labor interests with other employees and other occupations for well paid jobs, good benefits and job security, she said.
This story will be updated throughout the day. Check back soon for more information.
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